Friday • 9/20/2024 •

For these two weeks, we are taking a thematic approach to Paul’s Pastoral Epistles, his letters to Timothy and Titus. The first three days of this week, we looked at the way the apostle addresses our deficits in faith, hope, and love. Today we are in the second of four days in which we take up the way Christ teaches us godliness, temperance, justice, and courage. And on the last three days of this special series, we will think about what Paul describes as the positive aspects of faith, hope, and love in these letters. Today: temperance, self-control, or self-mastery.

Growing up, I had a temper problem. A bad one. I’d throw my bat and helmet if I struck out in baseball. I could fly into a rage if my clothes didn’t fit just right. I had a favorite red striped shirt — I could count on getting into an argument when I wore it to school. I’d quarrel with a teacher to the point of tears if I didn’t like a test grade.

Flying off the handle felt so … so, freeing. But eventually I came to see that when I lost control, I was, well, out of control. I was the definition of our Eucharistic Prayer: “when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death.” There was part of me that was broken and in need of healing.

One of the fantastic features of the Pastoral Epistles is the way that Paul (perhaps under the influence of his traveling companion the Beloved Physician Luke) talks about “sound teaching” (see, for example, 1 Timothy 1:9; Titus 2:1). The Greek for “sound” is an adjectival participle from the verb hygiainein, which means to make healthy. In part, Jesus came into the world to heal us of the out-of-control appetites that cripple and enslave us. He came to deliver us from:

Gluttony (“Cretans are … lazy gluttons” — Titus 1:12) and Drunkenness (“not enslaved to much wine” — Titus 2:3; also 1 Timothy 3:3). Instead, Jesus enables receiving “with thanksgiving … and consecration by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:3-4)
Avarice — “love of money” (1 Timothy 3:3; 6:5-10). Instead, Jesus enables receiving good things in life for enjoyment (1 Timothy 6:17-19)
Uncontrolled tongues (“not to be slanderers” — Titus 2:3) and Anger. Instead, Jesus enables us to be “not quick-tempered… or violent … but … master of oneself” (Titus 1:7,8) so that we can promote “the good” (Titus 2:3-4)
Being a lover of self and of pleasure (2 Timothy 3:2,4). Instead, Jesus enables us to be a lover of “the good” and of God (2 Timothy 3:3,4) … and in the case of younger wives, of husbands and children (Titus 2:4)

It’s as though there’s a certain madness, a sickness of soul, from which we must be delivered. Recalling, I suspect, his own emotional prison of hatred for the first believers in Christ, Paul describes the situation of all of us in Titus 3:3: “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, despicable, hating one another.”

The only possible remedy must come from on high. It does so, as Paul says in the following verses. As we pointed out two days ago, these are verses the lectionary appoints for reading on Christmas Day: “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:4–7 in the NASB, emphasis added).

God’s response to our enslavement “to various passions and pleasures” is the sending of his Son. The “kindness” that appears is Christ; you’ll recall that the term Paul uses here (chrēstotēs) would have sounded to the Greek ear like the title “Christ.”

And the term Paul uses for “love for mankind” is philanthrōpia, (“affection for humankind”). Titus and his congregation would have been reminded of the story of Prometheus. To amplify our discussion of two days ago: Prometheus had given fire to people so they could turn darkness to light. Zeus punished Prometheus for too much philanthrōpia, affection for humans. By contrast, Paul is saying, God sees us in the darkness of our foolishness, disobedience, straying enslavement to desire, malice, envy, despicability, and mutual hatred — and God’s heart is softened toward us. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound! God sends his own philanthrōpia in person to rescue us — not by our works, but by his mercy — to wash us clean by baptism, to make us new by rebirth in the Holy Spirit, to make us right in his sight, and to make us members of his family, indeed heirs of his estate.

The picture that the Beloved Physician Luke (along with Mark) paints of the formerly shackled and demon-driven Gerasene sitting at Jesus’s feet and “in his right mind” (sōphronein) is a picture of us! Jesus’s healing gift for the Gerasene was self-mastery, self-control, temperance. Jesus comes to give us ourselves back again.

For most of us (certainly for me), the merciful invasion of Jesus into our lives brings a nearly instant healing of some disordered affections and unruly passions: anger dissipates, wanderings lose their allure. At the same time, for most of us (and again, certainly for me), the merciful invasion of Jesus means the Holy Spirit works over the long haul to bathe and rebathe, pushing back lingering areas of darkness within, giving us gradual control over besetting sins, and working an ongoing renewal that we know he will see through to completion on “the Day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:7). May you and I find him faithful to the end.

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+